Advisory statements of the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (‘ILCOR’)

Abstract

The International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR ) was formed in 1992 to provide a forum for liaison between principal resuscitation organizations worldwide. Although the criteria for participation were not closely defined, member organizations were expected to have an accepted remit for creating resuscitation guidelines, preferably for more than one country, and to be multidisciplinary in membership. At present, ILCOR comprises representatives of the American Heart Association (AHA), the European Resuscitation Council (ERC), the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (HSFC), the Australian Resuscitation Council (ARC), the Resuscitation Councils of Southern Africa (RCSA), and the newly formed Council of Latin America for Resuscitation (CLAR). The AHA published standards for resuscitation in 1974. They were updated under the new designation guidelines —which better reflected their purpose—in 1980, 1986, and 1992. A number of national councils in Europe followed the American lead by introducing their own guidelines, which were eventually consolidated by the ERC in 1992. The motive was to make widely available throughout the continent a system for resuscitation that was perceived as matching more closely the needs of countries in Europe, most of which were less developed in this discipline than North America. Different traditions in the use and availability of drugs also predicated a modified approach. Increasingly these have been accepted as an appropriate model within Europe and have become well established. Similar developments took place in Australia and Southern Africa. While the emergence of new organizations with a remit for resuscitation widened interest and expertise, there were …